Dead Stars Making Noise in Brooklyn

Jacksonville natives have single 'Waste Away' featured on MTV Hive website

Although they’ve been around since 2009, the indie rock band Dead Stars, is beginning to make more noise than ever.

The three-piece band — cousins and Jacksonville natives Jeff and Jaye Moore and friend John Watterberg from Albuquerque, N.M. — just finished recording their second album, "High Gain." The five-song EP is set to drop June 4.

Dead Stars has recently gained notoriety after the single "Waste Away” was featured on MTV Hive’s website.

But guitarist Jeff Moore says he's taking the recent publicity with a grain of salt.

"It’s great. The ultimate goal, of course, is for as many people to hear your music as possible. You obviously want to enjoy what you do, and you want other people to hear it. Any time people are paying attention it’s cool. … I just want to keep on going and keep making music. Whatever happens, happens. We’ve been doing this for a while … so you try to not get too excited or too bummed either way. Whether things are good or bad you just try and keep going,” he said.

When asked what type of genre Dead Stars fits into, Jeff said that although they joke about being “nerd grunge,” they consider themselves more of a fuzz pop or indie rock band, but that there’s really no right answer.

“There’s so many different kinds of music put under the indie umbrella now, but I just feel that for us [it’s] just having that simple set up of drums, bass, guitar and vocals, of course. I like to explore what we can in that minimalist type of setup.”

The band finds a lot of inspiration from bands both old and new. Growing up, The Beatles were one of these inspirations.

Today, they listen to a variety of bands. The combination of older bands from the late '80s and early '90s, like Dinosaur Jr. and newer bands, such as Yuck, provide inspiration in finding their own, unique sound.

Writing the songs themselves is very important to the band. Their feeling is that the music should be as honest as possible. But how do they do that?

“I feel that if you write about day-to-day life, that’s the easiest way to be honest and be who you are. Inspiration can come from anything. I kind of just sit around with my acoustic guitar and just wait for it to happen. …. It’s one of those things that when you do come up with something cool, it’s like, I almost feel like I…don’t remember coming up with it…It just comes from somewhere, I don’t know,” Jeff said.

The band has a second single coming out with in the next week. Dead Stars also have a music video for the single "Waste Away" that will be available on YouTube soon.

The new album "High Gain" is available June 4 on iTunes. The band's last album, "I Get By," is available on Spotify.